While I don't approve of the patent litigation, it's not fair to characterize 3D Systems as a patent troll. They do spend plenty of time and energy (and money) creating better products, as they did to create their existing products.

That's the problem with patents. It presumes that the ideas are "stolen" and not independently developed.

Why should they spend money on R&D? So they can create the product they want to sell. Other people should do the same. As far as I'm concerned, as long as it can be shown that a technology which has been patented has also been independently developed by another party, then claims of infringement should be lost. After all, if the reasoning stems from money invested in R&D, what about the R&D done by the competition? What if they actually did their own research and development? And what if they did a better job than the plaintiff?

I'm sorry, but blood, sweat, tears and resources argument doesn't move me. Lots of and lots of people work their asses off daily and only get paid for it once. If someone does all the R&D, patents and markets their thing first and they make a profit, then they achieved their goal and established a reputation. There should be NOTHING that guarantees their business model except continued hard work and effort. This notion of doing it once and getting paid forever is just broken. Worse is the notion of getting someone else to do it once and then getting paid forever. But now we're talking about patent trolls and the entertainment industry.

Exactly, and that is the way it's supposed to happen. Patents, Copyright and others are not supposed to guarantee that a few people get rich, but instead that the benefit to society is maximized. I lost count on how many times the constitution has been quoted (on both cases) to prove it so. The question remains on how the hell did they manage to sell us the first definition so it's now the most common argument.

Have the patents that pertain to this product expired? Are they in some other way invalid? If not, the company should still enjoy their protection, since that way the benefit to society is maximised. The company innovates and profits, we get new and better (cheaper, bigger, more effective, whatever - better is a broad term) products. After some time, other companies get to make products using the same innovation and prices decrease, or supply improves or whatever. Rinse and repeat.

The first concern of a company is their income, not if people would benefit from a better product.Company no benefit, company not producing.Company small benefit, people huge benefit, company probably not producing,Company huge benefit, people small benefit, company definitely producing,

That will simply never happen. There will always be a passioned individual here or there who will create something useful or interesting.

You fail to appreciate what it means to be human. People often paint, and sing and build and create simply for the fun of it. Being creative and expressive is part of human nature. Youtube is FILLED with examples of this behavior. They don't do it in hopes of getting rich. And they aren't all any good. But some stars appear now and again don't they?

I think you may be misunderstanding GPP. It was a simple (somewhat pedantic) statement about how the traditional definition of a patent troll is someone that doesn't have a product. Since they have products, they're not a patent troll.

You're essentially asking why bother with patents at all. The hobbyists have been copying patented innovations of these commercial 3D companies. It was only a matter of time before this happened. Before, it would have been swatting at mosquitos. Now, a rabbit's popped up with $3 million, and they're going to shoot it.

The hobbyists have created a lot of innovation, too. The basic hobbyist MO is copy and improve. That's fine when you're copying other open source/hardware stuff... but when you copy someone's proprietary crap, you're in a grey area.

Hobbyists will obviously argue against patents, because they don't benefit from them much at all. Commercial companies need to do something to prevent large scale ripping off of their work, or they can't survive. (Case in point: the recent MakerBot Industries change of heart... which depresses and dissapoints me but as a small manufacturer myself I understand why they might think they have to do that)

This absolutely affects these commercial companies' bottom line, and they have every legal right to protect the investments they've made in R & D. I have a commercial 3D printer myself and I just went out of maintenance partially because a brand new Replicator 2 is possibly better and costs the same as one year's maintenance. This is an absolutely clear textbook case of what patents are supposed to be for.

This is essentially a collusion of worlds. "Cool, I could make that" vs. someone's got to make a living. Believe me, it sucks when you know you could make something but you're just not allowed to. I have a good deal of sympathy for both sides. I've released open source software (including -very- minor contributions to the Linux kernel), I'm becoming active at my local hackerspace, AND I sell proprietary industrial products that I could not make a living doing if they were free to copy.

FDM has been around since the 80s it's not new. And neither 3D systems or Stratasys came up with it. S Scott Crump did. Now they may have patents on STL that's a different story. And I am sure they have BS patents around FDM but they didn't invent FDM and the tech is over 30 years old now. And that is what the Replicator 2 and RepRap use not STL so bullshit to all of this statement that they should have patent protection on FDM.

I'm being a bit lazy by not looking this up, but what about FDM using support material? I'd bet that was somewhat later than FDM itself. I'd bet there are a lot of cumulative improvements in FDM that are still covered by patents.

So, everyone's free to make basic FDM machines as they were described by the earliest patents. There's a lot of ground Stratasys covered since then that is probably being copied and leaving even FDM producers exposed to potential legal problems.

I'm pretty conflicted on the whole thing. Give the hackers a basic tech like FDM, and they'd make most of the same improvements themselves... but they're going to be hitting ground covered and patented by commercial entities along the way. Many many times, however, someone's going to have looked at a commercial printer for inspiration... and that's essentially an unfair shortcut.

I think people should be free to produce what they can FOR THEMSELVES without worrying about patent infringements... which would cover most hardware hackers (sort of a fair use concept). However, once you get funding and try to commercialize something, you're subject to normal commercial rules.

This absolutely affects these commercial companies' bottom line, and they have every legal right to protect the investments they've made in R & D. I have a commercial 3D printer myself and I just went out of maintenance partially because a brand new Replicator 2 is possibly better and costs the same as one year's maintenance. This is an absolutely clear textbook case of what patents are supposed to be for.

Is it though? If we look at something like the Robertson screw head, the patent allowed them a monopoly on that product which allowed them to recoup initial r&d, machine costs etc over their patent life. Fair enough. Don't want a big screw company that does Torx or Phillips to retool then blow you out of the water with lower pricing because they already have their machinery paid for.

But in modern systems when advancement is so quick do we need these long patent lives? It's basically artificially slow

Well, those are called royalties... and that's an extremely common way to handle things.

In fact, it's a potential outcome in this specific case. Many royalty agreements started as lawsuits. It's probably not likely here, though... since the per unit profit for the little guys is so drastically different than the bigger guy's margins. 3D Systems will just want this stopped.

It'd sure be nice if there was a uniform way to know what patents apply to your product idea and a fixed formula for what royalties sh

Legitimate competition, perhaps. But I think they can justifiably object to competition that significantly copies their technology. [I am not trying to make a statement about 3D systems' patents, their validity, or any possible infringement by Form1's embodiment - I haven't evaluated it enough to judge.]

We're not talking about an Apple-Samsung patent war here, quibbling over bounce-back software patents and rounded corners. Rapid prototyping is the kind of thing that the patent system was designed to protect: genuine, tangible technology that makes things and makes things better. All the current players in the market invested a lot of money, time, and ingenuity to create theirs; they are allowed by law to defend themselves.

They are a patent troll if they are patenting something obvious and using that to stifle competition. Whether they are practicing the patent or not should not be the sole determiner of whether they are a patent troll.

If you really want innovation then patent a firmware restriction that prevents printing anything rectangular having rounded corners.

Actually, it's pretty fair to characterize 3D Systems as a patent troll. The Form 1 kickstarter received considerably more press *before it was completed* than their patent ever did, and they claim in their legal filing that the press they did receive was sufficient that both Form 1 (who is actually in the 3D printer field) AND Kickstarter (who is not) should have known everything about said patent due to it's coverage in a single blog posting online. If a single blog posting online is sufficient for persons and groups uninvolved in the field to be legally expected to be fully aware of all details of the relevant patent and it's ownership, then the coverage Form 1's project received _well in advance of completion_ would be sufficient that 3D Systems should be legally expected to have known about it, and been aware that all that was required of them to prevent any violation of their patent was communicating with Kickstarter and informing them of said patent violation, which is against Kickstarter's terms, and would have resulted in the termination of the project before any infringement could occur.

Instead, 3D Systems willfully allowed said project to go to completion, rather than stopping it before it became a violation, and therefore if the same level of expectation of awareness their lawyers place upon Kickstarter is placed upon them, they are in fact the ones responsible for said infringement, by virtue of knowingly allowing it to proceed.

In all likelyhood, they decided there was more money to be gained from suing a successful project in an attempt to "claim" the funds collected without having to produce any product for it (as well as "treble damages, which would likely in their minds constitute considerably more than three times the collected project funds). Therefore, yes, they are in fact patent trolls.

Thank you, Humpty Dumpty, but words do not mean whatever you want them to mean. You have illustrated their likely strategy, but this does not make them "patent trolls". "Patent troll" means something else:

Patent troll is a pejorative term used for a person or company who enforces patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered aggressive or opportunistic with no intention to manufacture or market the patented invention.

It is not the patent holders responsibility to publicize their patents. It is the responsibility of any inventor to do a patent search first to understand the patent landscape and determine where they have freedom to operate.

It is not the patent holders responsibility to publicize their patents.

It just occurred to me: might this be the very thing which is needed in order to repair the patent system? What if patent enforcement did require that the patent holder could demonstrate that they put great effort/expense into publicity?

Can anyone think of a downside? Sure, it's an expense and no one wants invention to be expensive, but it's got to be far less expense than independent parallel patent searches by the thousands/millio

It is the responsibility of any inventor to do a patent search first to understand the patent landscape and determine where they have freedom to operate.

Bullshit. You have absolutely no affirmative obligation to perform a patent search. In fact, it amounts to negligence to do so, because the USPTO's policy of rubber-stamping everything that crosses their desks means that whatever you're going to do almost certainly is covered by multiple trivial patents. If it can be shown that you were aware of those patents, any damage awards will be trebled.

It is not the patent holders responsibility to publicize their patents. It is the responsibility of any inventor to do a patent search first to understand the patent landscape and determine where they have freedom to operate.

Ignorance is not a defense in the eyes of the law.

This argument is absurd because there are simply so many patents - no small company could possibly be able to search through them to make sure they aren't infringing. I don't know if you have seen this article [bbc.com] in which they quote an estimate, made by the American Intellectual Property Law Association, of the total cost if each software company employed enough patent lawyers to check through even a year's worth of software patents, spending only 10 minutes on each: $1.5 trillion, nearly 10% of the US GDP. It

Kickstarter doesn't give out money unless the project goes all the way to completion and meets its goals. There wouldn't be much point in suing them before the Kickstarter was over, they would just kill the Kickstarter and have no money to sue over. You have to wait until they've got a few million bucks. That's how patent trolling works.

"And how are monopolies lost? Think about it. Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly. But after that, the product people aren't the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It's the marketing guys or the ones who expand the business into Latin America or whatever. Because what's the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself? So a different group of people start to move up. And who usually ends up running the show? The sales guy. John Akers at IBM is the consummate example. Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they're no longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn't. Look at Microsoft — who's running Microsoft? (interviewer: Steve Ballmer.) Right, the sales guy. Case closed. And that's what happened at Apple, as well."

Short form: "Nothing succeeds like Success". It's why most Free Markets end up destroying themselves. If even one participant can rise above the common herd, positive feedback mechanisms begin to form whereby the winners get bigger at the expense of the losers and the bigger they get, the harder the task of competing with them becomes. Eventually most, if not all competitors become insignificant or extinct and the driving forces for the winners get replaced with forces unrelated to what originally made them winners.

This sure seems to make sense. It would be interesting to find some data on this. Something like "number of automobile companies by year" and such for various industries. I couldn't find anything with a quick search, but someone here has probably run across some data like this.

True. When someone's a dyed-in-the-wool statist and wants to denigrate free-market economics at every turn, as the GP obviously wanted to do, then it doesn't matter if you're Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or a politician or a hairdresser. There's not much you can say about the subject that won't be turned against you.

I work for a company where the engineers lead the company instead of sales/marketing. Long ago and for a long time, I have always felt that no one can steer a company better than the people who make it work. The company I work for has proven that notion to be untrue.... at least in this instance.

Where I work, we are beholden to the interests of customers and the requirements of government regulators. Problem is, the engineering side does not a

That will probably happen, but I have an idea, a painful one, but it could work. We could abandon the industry that is held captive by the patent(s). If everyone abandons the industry and boycotts the industry, perhaps the PTO will wake up and listen to the people on patent reform. Mr. President wants the country to have jobs, and the 3D printing industry is a good job stream, but if we let the industry fall on its face because of patent issues, it'll look bad for the administration. Perhaps then the pr

The patent in the link has the limitation: "the support structure selectively having different energy levels applied to it at at least the down-facing interfacing region than do the intermediate region and the object to thereby create weak points with less solidification in the solid state transformed liquid medium than the intermediate region and the three-dimensional object at at least the down-facing interfacing regions to facilitate ease of removal of the support structure from a completed three-dimensional object".

So if Form 1 software is tweaked not to do this, then it would not infringe. At the same time, by the filing of the lawsuit, 3D Systems may have done irreperable harm to Form 1. Counter suit anyone?

Unfortunately, the automatically generated, easy to remove support structures were a key feature that form 1 advertised for the machine (probably second only to the high resolution of the prints). The tool becomes much less versatile without them.

Isn't this just like those polystyrene model kits for kids that would have all the parts connected to the main plastic piping by thin, short stems where they could be easily broken off by hand?That's been around at least 30 years easy.

So if Form 1 software is tweaked not to do this, then it would not infringe. At the same time, by the filing of the lawsuit, 3D Systems may have done irreperable harm to Form 1. Counter suit anyone?

If Form 1 currently infringes, such that they would have to tweak their software to not infringe, then 3D Systems did nothing wrong in filing their lawsuit. A countersuit on such grounds would be frivolous and unjustified, and only get them into more trouble.

So if Form 1 software is tweaked not to do this, then it would not infringe. At the same time, by the filing of the lawsuit, 3D Systems may have done irreperable harm to Form 1. Counter suit anyone?

You are suggesting that they remove the part that they are being sued for, which pretty much indicates that the plaintiff was correct. Then they countersue because the plaintiff's totally valid patent suit did them irreparable harm? Sounds foolproof!

The US won't sue itself into oblivion. The US will sue itself into prosperity! Think of the boost to the economy of all that money changing hands. Think of the employment opportunities for patent lawyers, judges, court clerks and paralegals. Think of the courthouse construction boom. Think of the children! It has long been the dream of mankind to effortlessly gain wealth without doing any actual hard work. Patents are the realization of that dream. Eventually, we won't even need scientists or engine

When I make something as simple as a dovetail box, when it's time to cut off the lid, I carefully do not cut the lid all the way off, leaving some uncut areas around the edges to hold the lid in place so that the saw blade doesn't bind.

The patent in question is for generating supports to hold a model in place as it's being printed --- if one does this same thing in a subtractive process, it's obvious that one would be able to in an additive process.

Seems to me that this is a necessary and obvious part of doing any sort of 3D modelling in any kind of material, or things won't mould/print properly (because it's not technically possible for them to float in space while you work on them).

If anything, I would hope the patent was dismissed on the grounds of obviousness, but certainly it should be obvious to one "skilled in the art" of 3D printing. And, failing that, if they just got some reasonable and non-discriminatory patent licensing terms, there's a few million dollars lying about that they could have a chunk of just by NOT suing.

And, failing that, if they just got some reasonable and non-discriminatory patent licensing terms, there's a few million dollars lying about that they could have a chunk of just by NOT suing.

A few million dollars is nothing.. a fraction, even less. I'm guessing these guys would be happy to spend a few million dollars stifling any competition and clutching on to their dying monopoly for just a bit longer.

Remember that this patent was filed in 2000. I think it's pretty safe to say that a lot of things that are common practice in injection molding were not exactly obvious when translated to 3D printing. It's easy to look at it now and say "of course," but back then it wasn't exactly commonplace.

Seems as though the patent is legit. Although it's not nice of them to sue without talking to the From1 builders first.... Or did they attempt to do that and got rejected? If so, it's their given right to start legal action.Could Form1 licence the patent is the next question I'd ask.

You may not have read the patent carefully enough (or gotten past the 80-ish pages of drawings). What the patent is actual claiming is a way of getting higher resolution out of stereolithographic materials by blending cross-sectional layers that have a resolution greater than that of the material. By using the claimed method of blending those layers and their cure times in just the right way, you can get thinner (higher-resolution) cross-sectional layers than the material, would get alone.

You may not have read the patent carefully enough (or gotten past the 80-ish pages of drawings). What the patent is actual claiming is a way of getting higher resolution out of stereolithographic materials by blending cross-sectional layers that have a resolution greater than that of the material. By using the claimed method of blending those layers and varying the cure exposure times in just the right way, you can get thinner (higher-resolution) cross-sectional layers than the material, if cured using normal layer-by-layer techniques, would get alone.

It was a novel and non-obvious advance in stereolithographic techniques.

Although it's not nice of them to sue without talking to the From1 builders first

Since the 2007 MedImmune v. Genentech [wikipedia.org] case it has been very difficult for a patentee to discuss potential infringement or licensing with another party without creating declaratory judgment jurisdiction [wikipedia.org]. DJ jurisdiction allows the alleged infringer to file a suit for a declaratory judgment that the patent is invalid, unenforceable, or uninfringed (or some combination). The big advantage is that it lets the alleged infringer pick the time and place of the suit. So patentees have become more likely to file suit and talk about settlement later rather than trying to negotiate a license and then filing a suit only if that fails.

Yeah, I don't see the point of going after Kickstarter itself either. Kickstarter is just a middleman for acquiring funds. How would Kickstarter know that Form1 was avoiding patent licensing? 3D Systems is in the wrong for suing Kickstarter, but they have a case as far as Form1's project goes.

Their claim is that Kickstarter knowing sold infringing the products to the project backers, and that as a seller they are liable.They don't see Kickstarter as an innocent middleman, they see them as an active reseller.

The purpose of patents is to ensure that people can spend a lot of money on research, with some kind of general guarantee that it can pay off for them. Making support struts thinner at the point of contact doesn't really strike me as something that resulted from a protracted compaign of research, but rather an isolated flash of insight.
Those flashes of insight aren't irrelevant; they're important to making things move forward. But they don't need to be patented; people will have them anyway. In order to encourage the progress of science and the useful arts, I think one really only needs to protect the things that require a great deal of effort to discover.

The purpose of patents is to ensure that people can spend a lot of money on research, with some kind of general guarantee that it can pay off for them.

actually? thats not correct. According to the US constitution "
The Congress shall have power...To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" In exchage for publishing the details of your invention. The promotion of the progress of science and useful arts relies on you publishing the details of your invention. When you do this the government secures that exclusive right to

It's possible you're right. Inuitively, one would think that removing a possible incentive for spending a lot of money in R&D would reduce money spent there (which, in general, probably reduces results). There are things in this world that it takes a lot of money to find out. Generally, that means a profit motive (which might not exist if you can't necessarily capitalize on your own discoveries), or government funding (which makes sense for things like medical research, but not necessarily for things th

Hm, serves me right for assuming the patent linked in the summary was the one the lawsuit was actually about. It appears that the one linked to has no actual relation, based on looking at the demand letter.

This is especially true in software.One person can take months doing something that another person thinks is intuitively obvious.Then, since no one is going around reading every patent, you could easily reproduce a method that someone patented. Thus punishing the good developer who could "just do it," as well as punishing the company for not finding a way to read every software patent and their own code to avoid infringement.Somehow this helps creativity and innovation?

These guys suing Kickstarter makes about as much sense as Apple suing Wal-Mart for selling Samsung tablets and phones. Are we going to expect Wal-Mart, Best Buy and eBay to start doing patent checks on everything they put on their shelves or list on their site? If by some strange quirk this case moves forward with Kickstarter attached, that will be the legal expectation by precedent.

IANL, but in the complaint they may have already given Kickstarter cause to get removed. They mention Kickstarter's TOS and

It makes exactly as much sense. It may make no sense to an outside observer, but it seems to be a legitimate outcome of the thought process: "Manufacturer, you're violating my patent and making money off of it. Retailer, you're making money too, by supporting Manufacturer's viol

Rep-rap and the like should not worry too much. IANAL but upon reading the patent claims (all of which expand on claim 1) the primary innovation seems to be curing the resin to a lesser degree to create weak points in the support structure. If you're extruding plastic from a nozzle this IMHO does not apply. So I looked at the Form1 website and indeed they are curing a resin to create solid objects. Bummer, cause that method is in may ways better than extruding melted plastic and only requires a single axis

To be honest, 3d systems is the microsoft of the 3d printing community, they've been buying everybody out, even the small guys who make diy printers, and buying up all the patents. I'm going to guess that Formlabs refused to be bought up into 3D systems borganism, so they're suing them.

3d systems also does other evil things like charging lots for ink(should I call it toner instead?) and punish you if you use any ink that isn't from them. This is especially troublesome when you're using specialty inks to make real parts where you need special properties like fire resistance, something that 3d systems more often than not doesn't offer. Lately they've been trying to push this new cartridge system that uses RFID to make sure you're only using their cartridges. Luckily, it's not catching on.

According to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20434031 [bbc.co.uk], Kickstarter get a 5% (?) cut of the money pledged to $PROJECTNAME$, which seems to be sufficient involvement to satisfy enough lawyers to get them co-cited.